Dear Amy – Helen Callaghan

 

DESCRIPTION:

Margot Lewis is the agony aunt for The Cambridge Examiner. Her advice column, Dear Amy, gets all kinds of letters – but none like the one she’s just received:

‘Dear Amy,
I don’t know where I am. I’ve been kidnapped and am being held prisoner by a strange man. I’m afraid he’ll kill me.
Please help me soon,
Bethan Avery’

Bethan Avery has been missing for years. This is surely some cruel hoax. But, as more letters arrive, they contain information that was never made public. How is this happening? Answering this question will cost Margot everything . . .

Dear Amy is a good debut psychological thriller.

It starts with the abduction of teenage schoolgirl Katie Browne who in a moment of anger had decided she was leaving home, had packed a bag, sneaked out of her house and had decided to go to her Dad’s (without telling anyone). It’s a foul, wet, windy night. A car pulls up beside her. The driver calls her name. She doesn’t know him. He offers her a lift. She declines but there is fear in her voice … Just as she’s decided to go back home and face the music she realises that someone is coming up behind her….

The story then switches to the voice of Margot Lewis, a teacher at St Hilda’s Academy who also happens to write the Dear Amy advice column in the Cambridge Examiner. Margot has no children of her own and her husband Eddie has left her for someone else.

Margot’s character seems quite proper and correct – kind of old fashioned and appears to be quite practical and very much in control. She had been Katie’s teacher at one time and was concerned about the missing girl.

Then a letter arrives at the newspaper from a Bethan Avery, who had been missing for almost 20 years, begging for help and saying she has been kidnapped and is held prisoner in a cellar. Was it a prank? Was it genuine? Was it connected to the disappearance of Katie Browne?

Margot tries to find out more about Bethan Avery and wants her to contact her again. Her search for information about Bethan becomes almost an obsession. She’s also annoyed that some people, including the Police, believe that Katie Browne has simply run away from home and Margot feels nobody is really trying to find her. Finally a criminologist called Martin Forrester contacts her regarding the letters from Bethan, telling her the Police provided her details.

As the story progresses we find out a little bit more about Margot via conversations with her soon to be ex-husband and her friend Lily who thinks Margot is taking on too much and will make herself ill.

There are some chilling moments too. A man in a car outside the school, gates, an encounter with a man in a carpark, someone watching and waiting in a car near Margot’s home, silent phone calls.

The tension builds and we see Margot starting to unravel, bit by bit, but still searching for answers in the Bethan Avery case and trying to link it to the disappearance of Katie Browne.

I quite liked the writing style and the various voices telling the story. The dialogue is generally good and although there are some wilder, slightly over the top scenarios that are just too far-fetched, overall I enjoyed this book.

[I received a review copy of Dear Amy  via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review]

 Author’s website:   http://ift.tt/1zLBc40

 

In The Clearing – Robert Dugoni

 

Description:  Detective Tracy Crosswhite has a skill, and a soft spot, for tackling unsolved crimes. Having lost her own sister to murder at a young age, Tracy has dedicated her career to bringing justice and closure to the families and friends of victims of crime.

So when Jenny, a former police academy classmate and protégé, asks Tracy to help solve a cold case that involves the suspicious suicide of a Native American high school girl forty years earlier, Tracy agrees. Following up on evidence Jenny’s detective father collected when he was the investigating deputy, Tracy probes one small town’s memory and finds dark, well-concealed secrets hidden within the community’s fabric. Can Tracy uphold the promise she’s made to the dead girl’s family and deliver the truth of what happened to their daughter? Or will she become the next victim?

In The Clearing is the third book in the Tracy Crosswhite series. I stumbled across the second book in the series Her Final Breath last year and enjoyed it so much I then had to read the first book My Sister’s Grave.

In the Clearing has two main threads.  A murder investigation in Seattle (where Tracy is normally based) which seems like a domestic and the 40 year old case in Stoneridge that her friend Jenny asks her to look at. Tracy’s skill seems to be tackling unsolved, older crimes. Although Stoneridge is out of Tracy’s jurisdiction, her friend Jenny wanted an independent assessment of the file in case it had to be officially re-opened. Tracy manages to get permission to investigate from her boss Nolasco on condition she does it in her own time. Luckily she was owed time off and returned to Stoneridge.

As she delves deeper into the case it looks like the town has its share of secrets and possible cover ups. Some people really don’t want anyone to look too closely at the case or have it re-opened. She enlists the help of experts who have access to modern forensics methods.

There were a few twists and turns along the way and the ending wasn’t quite what I expected.

I like Tracy.  She’s hard working, fairly straightforward and tenacious when seeking clues. She takes some risks but I don’t think she’s one for flaunting the rules.  She has a love interest lawyer Dan O’Leary but he only appears briefly in this book.

Tracy’s boss, Captain Johnny Nolasco, doesn’t like Tracy. In fact there’s no love lost between them.  In this book Nolasco seems much more subdued (all part of the story) but I kind of missed the dynamic that was between them in the previous two books.  If you haven’t read the first two books then that doesn’t make any difference.  Each of the books can stand alone but some characters appear in all the books, all with a role to play.

Robert Dugoni has a good writing style – easy to read but a complex enough plot to be a satisfying read.  I love the procedural and forensic detail we get from him. It’s easily understandable and never too complicated or boring. There are a few twists and turns along the way and the ending wasn’t quite what I expected.

This is another of those books where I just had to stay up late to finish it.

Author’s website:   robertdugoni.com